Add @BeforeAll and @AfterAll hooks

[aslakhellesoy]

People keep asking for BeforeAll and AfterAll hooks. I haven't had a big need for them myself, but it seems to me this would be sufficient:

public class GlobalHooks {
    private static boolean dunit = false;

    @Before
    public void beforeAll() {
        if(!dunit) {
            Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(afterAllThread);
            // do the beforeAll stuff...
            dunit = true;
        }
    }
}

If this doesn't cut it for you, please explain in this ticket, and maybe we'll add special support for it.

[mattwynne]

Does that fire when the process dies, or just the current cucumber run? What if you wanted to do multiple runs without killing the process? (In an Aruba 5.2 stylee)

[aslakhellesoy]

It wouldn't be triggered by a VM shutdown. It would be part of the runner's life cycle and fire after the last scenario.

For Java I think they would have to be defined as static methods as well.

[tmertens]

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this
"BeforeAll" hook? It seems your example would work well for running some
code only once at the start of the scenarios, but any embedded would be
inserted into the first scenario that runs that code and not at the root
level of the report.

Furthermore, I supposed embed wouldn't work in the shutdown hook either in
the above case. Given scenario.embed is used for embedding data in
reports, I'm guessing there would have to be some new object reference in
order to embed data in the reports for @BeforeAll/@afterall hooks outside
of the scenarios.

Cheers,

-Tim

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 6:46 AM, Aslak Hellesøy notifications@github.comwrote:

It wouldn't be triggered by a VM shutdown. It would be part of the
runner's life cycle and fire after the last scenario.

For Java I think they would have to be defined as static methods as well.

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[aslakhellesoy]

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this "BeforeAll" hook?

From a BeforeAll/AfterAll hook you would have optional access to a Report object with similar embed methods as the Scenario object available to Before/After hooks. Embeddings embedded from a BeforeAll would end up at the top of the report, before the first scenario. Similar for embeddings embedded from AfterAll - they would end up in the report after the last scenario.

If you attempt to do a Scenario.embed from an AfterAll hook you would get an exception - the scenario would be "closed" by then.

[mikquinlan]

We definitely have many uses for this. Currently we use a static
initialiser (which I think we got from this forum) to start up embedded
databases, Hadoop's Mini MR cluster among other things.

It would be good to have a clear annotation such as @BeforeAll and
@afterall rather than a specific method name with an @before tag.

On 2 May 2013 07:37, Aslak Hellesøy notifications@github.com wrote:

What would happen if you try to embed data into the report in this
"BeforeAll" hook?

From a BeforeAll/AfterAll hook you would have optional access to a Reportobject with similar embed methods as the
Scenario object available to Before/After hooks. Embeddings embedded from
a BeforeAll would end up at the top of the report, before the first
scenario. Similar for embeddings embedded from AfterAll - they would end
up in the report after the last scenario.

If you attempt to do a Scenario.embed from an AfterAll hook you would get
an exception - the scenario would be "closed" by then.

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[pranasblk]

+1. I want having multiple BeforeAll and AfterAll supported (opposite to not like World)

[mikquinlan]

Any movement on this issue? I'd love to have it. Of course, I'm just one person. ;-)

[aslakhellesoy]

Those of you who need it - how about sending a pull request?

[quantoid]

+1 because the trick above won't work for AfterAll

[paoloambrosio]

@quantoid It's not a trick, it's Java! Why do you say that it does not work for AfterAll? The only Issue I see is with reports.

The @AfterAll hook would be the afterAllThread variable in Aslak's code.

Added this snippet to the Java Hello World Example:

    @Before
    public void beforeAll() {
        if(!dunit) {
            Runtime.getRuntime().addShutdownHook(new Thread() {
                public void run() {
                    System.out.println("snake!");
                }
            });
            System.out.println("badger");
            dunit = true;
        }
    }

After changing the runner to use the progress formatter, when I run mvn test, I get the desired behaviour:

badger

.........
Tests run: 12, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.466 sec
snake!

[quantoid]

Sorry, I can see how it works in Java, I should've added "...in Groovy" but could be wrong about that too.

I'd want both 'all' hooks to be able to access variables that other glue can access, i.e. those in the Script scope.

[paoloambrosio]

Same thing in the groovy-calculator example with BeforeAll and AfterAll, accessing the World object that contains shared variables.

class CustomWorld {

    def value = null
    def dunit = false

    // ...
}

Before() {
    if (!dunit) {
        dunit = true

        println "badger"
        value = "snake!" // sets the value in the World

        addShutdownHook {
            println value // reads the value from the World
        }
    }
}

Note that if you change the value variable in other steps, the shutdown hook is not going to print snake!, so the value is not determined when the closure is defined but when it is called (at the very end).

This change to a step will make the AfterAll closure print mushroom:

Then(~"the stored result should be (.*)") { double expected ->
    value = "mushroom"
    assert expected == result
}

Of course it works even if you define the value variable outside of the World object.

[quantoid]

Awesome, thanks! Where does the addShutdownHook come from? There seem to be so many classes mixed in to the scope of these closures.

[paoloambrosio]

@quantoid No magic there, it's part of the Groovy Object API

[quantoid]

Hmm, IMHO would be better to tear stuff down as part of the feature execution block rather than when the JVM shuts down.